History: Ninjutsu and Kuden: Why the Art Was Never Truly Secret

The term kuden is made up of two ideograms, ku 口 — mouth, and den 伝 — transmission. It is a far-reaching concept, closely bound up with the Japanese Way and with the arts, whether martial or otherwise. It is strongly present throughout shinobi no jutsu [ninjutsu], yet in discussion it is passed over and, for the most part, only half understood.

Many people hold the mistaken notion that the manuals of ninjutsu are written in a cipher, handed down orally so that the secrecy of their contents might be preserved. Sometimes the scrolls consist merely of lists of skills and tools, and this creates the illusion of some kind of code. But this interpretation is wrong, save for a few examples — such as information on the ingredients of certain explosives.

The meaning of the individual names may have been plain fact to anyone versed in the military terminology of the period in which a given scroll was composed. That we do not understand these names today does not mean they were equally obscure to the people concerned in the past. To attach the word kuden to certain skills makes the skills without it general knowledge — or at least intelligible to the people of a given school and age.

Most instructional manuals contain detailed information with a reference to further skills that are to be passed on orally. A ninja manual is almost always highly informative, but with a touch of hidden meaning, or a secret subtext. Everything considered too secret to be written down is likewise marked as kuden.

Ninjutsu itself was never secret!

To pay a local inhabitant for information was regarded as ninjutsu, just as was sending some man to observe the banners and identifying marks of an enemy army. Shinobi no jutsu is in essence a series of levels with loose boundaries between them. Some techniques were known to many students, others only to a chosen few. The closer you came to the head of a school's system, the closer you came to its deep secrets. Both the Shinobi Hiden and the Shōninki speak of sharing the deepest secrets with only one person — and by this is meant not merely a member of the family, but the one who shows the greatest aptitude for the work of the ninja.

"If you have children or grandchildren who are not good enough, or do not have the right mindset, then they should not receive the complete traditions of ninjutsu, and certain skills should be kept hidden from them. And to one chosen person alone should they be given in their fullness." Ninjutsu Ōgiden, 1586

Ninjutsu, however, was not always handed on to just one person. A whole generation of men from the province of Iga was hired to teach others the art of the ninja across most of the Japanese armies. About fifty ninja were hired in this way in each province, which gives hundreds, even thousands, of schools. How else could the demands and needs of an entire country have been met, if only one man of a single generation acquired the knowledge of ninjutsu?

In history we find no Japanese schools whose content was handed on in secrecy, or built solely on an oral tradition, with the exception of the Ōgiden manual mentioned above, where parts of the inner mechanisms are passed to only one person per generation. Only a small percentage of the teaching's content was kept secret in this way from its members. It must be understood, however, that certain parts of the teaching were meant to be understood only by the students of the school that had gathered those skills. In this sense, kuden may be divided into three kinds:

• [1] Skills that are known to most of the people engaged in military operations, and to those who concern themselves with shinobi no jutsu or are themselves shinobi soldiers. These are skills such as reconnaissance, topography and the arts of measurement — in short, the elements used by an entire army.
• [2] Skills whose effect is understood by everyone — explosives, say, or the techniques of night raids — but whose detailed particulars are not commonly known. The path to these skills, not their result, is the kuden, and it is known only to a select number of those engaged in this activity.
• [3] Skills that are a deep secret and are passed only among a few, very few, members across a school. The people who are the target of their effect are ignorant of their application — such as eavesdropping on conversations from within an enemy fortification without the agent being detected, techniques of infiltration and the making of sleeper agents, or the mystical elements kept for the more advanced students.

Kuden appears throughout Japanese culture, and this is one of the reasons for the loss of some of the finer details of the art of the ninja. All the teaching lineages have died out, and we no longer possess a living oral tradition with a verifiable background.

For the reader from the Western world it is best to see kuden as the oral transmission of information from teacher to student, meant either to keep a secret or to indicate something too complex to be written down.

On the sources: The period manuals cited above (Shinobi Hiden / Ninpiden, Shōninki, Ninjutsu Ōgiden) are available today in the modern English translations of Antony Cummins and Yoshie Minami. Japanese terms and names are given in the standard (Hepburn) romanization.

History: Ninja or Shinobi? Correcting the Myth of Japan's Shadow Warriors

The reading of the characters 忍者 as shinobi rather than ninja is assured when these characters appear in certain grammatical positions. We cannot say today precisely how the medieval Japanese read these ideograms. There is, however, a strong argument for shinobi no mono, especially where phonetic markers are available to aid the reading. The term shinobi begins to appear in historical documents in the 14th century and undoubtedly predates the word ninja.

From the standpoint of modern reading in English, "ninja" has become the familiar, fluent form, while shinobi — though the more correct term — is less widely known and carries fewer popular connotations. For this reason I use both terms throughout this article, switching between them as convenient.

Equally debatable are the ideograms that may be read as ninjutsu or shinobi no jutsu, by which we mean the art and skills of the ninja. Both versions are correct, but the phonetic markers on period documents show shinobi no jutsu as the proper reading, given that we have no records of words read as ninjutsu.


Shinobi No Mono

Myths: Many enthusiasts of ninjutsu today hold that the term ninja denotes a social class, like the term samurai, and in doing so they ignore important historical facts. This mistaken interpretation also gave rise to the myth of an "eternal struggle" between samurai and ninja, in which the samurai stood for GOOD and LIGHT and the ninja for DARKNESS and EVIL. According to such people, ninja existed as a parallel "shadow" military class with its own distinct hierarchy and codes, differing from those of the samurai; the ninja supposedly performed tasks the samurai could not, because the code of Bushidō and other laws forbade them to him. Where and how this fabrication arose is hard to pin down, but a large share of this disinformation within the shinobi no jutsu community is carried on the backs of the very teachers and instructors the world over, Japan included. Through their superficiality and greed they created the 20th-century ninja who confuses generations of young people to this day.

Facts: Soldiers of the shinobi were recruited from various social strata of medieval Japan, but broadly we may say that most ninja came either from the ranks of the lower samurai class or from the foot soldiers known as ashigaru. We may also say that the term shinobi was the name of a profession and a set of skills — just as today a physician is a physician and a smith a smith — while the level of those skills is not defined by it in any way. It is today established that ninjutsu was mastered even by high-ranking samurai, such as Uesugi Kenshin, called the Dragon of Echigo, and likewise his enemy "twin," the Tiger of Kai, the great Takeda Shingen himself. All the battles of medieval Japan were decided by the use of ninjutsu to a far greater degree than is officially acknowledged today.

On the basis of analysis of historical documents, two main categories of ninja emerge, which unfortunately are not distinguished grammatically. The only way to identify which shinobi is meant is to grasp the context of each historical reference.

• [1] A shinobi may be a man or a woman without any training, simply someone used for their innate abilities, however slight. For example, a person with a good memory may be used as a shinobi to record a mental image of a particular space, or a person with a good knowledge of a specific province (kyōdō) may be called upon to gather information of any kind in that land. This untrained individual is regarded as a ninja by the tacticians of medieval Japan, but is not what we would consider a ninja from our modern perspective.
• [2] The archetypal figure of the shinobi no mono — a man trained in the skills set out below, to whatever degree, and employed as needed by a general or by the daimyō himself.

It is important to realize that, on the one hand, the term shinobi may denote a relatively incapable person sent on some mission at a lord's whim, while on the other, shinobi may designate a group of highly qualified individuals, specialists engaged in covert operations that made them today's legends.

Very often the word ninja also appears with two epithets, "ninja as assassin" and "ninja as spy," both of which deserve correction, as they do not match the whole truth. Ninja were indeed used as assassins, but the evidence for this activity is scant and represents a very small part of their sphere of operation.

The shinobi was first and foremost a skilled maker and user of explosives and poisons, an arsonist and a saboteur; he could also break into fortified seats to steal property or information. He gathered information by eavesdropping, but also by theft. Occasionally he eliminated the inhabitants of target seats. Under cover of darkness he served as a guide for assault units in "no man's land." These skills are known collectively as In-nin. He also played the role of messenger, using secret codes to convey messages by sound, by symbols and by written text.

The ninja was NOT trained as an assassin; his primary task was "information-gatherer," and if opportunity arose, or if the situation required it, he was used as an assassin. The evidence points rather to the destruction of entire families (clans) and their homes, not of individual human targets.

Ninja were recruited from every social stratum of the population, but mostly came from families of the lower samurai classes and served in the retinue of a clan leader. As part of samurai culture, shinobi soldiers were specialized as far-ranging scouts and secret agents who infiltrated enemy lines and carried out espionage and sabotage. In an army, one shinobi was reckoned for roughly every hundred men. Their physical, military and combat skills were no different from those of their fellow samurai.

Besides various bujutsu (martial styles), they also trained in different non-combat skills, so that on their missions they could appear in the roles of street vendors, merchants, actors, vagrants, hired swordsmen, and even priests and monks. These non-combat skills we call Yo-nin.

Spies have existed as long as wars have been waged, but the shinobi (also called in Japan Yato, Yushi, Kanja, Kagi, Kamari, Kyoudan, Onmitsu, Oniwaban, Suppa, Rappa, Fuma, Iga No Mono, Koka No Mono, Nokizarru, Monogiki, Mitsumono and others — depending on the period or province) operated on the Japanese and Far Eastern scene from roughly the end of the 14th century, when the Chinese Kan (Cho, Saisaku or Yutei) was "Japanized," until he gradually vanished in the turmoil of the Meiji reforms in the 19th century. He was replaced by a combination of modern spies and special army units, where the spy plays the role of informant and the special unit provides the striking force of attack. This division of the two main spheres of the ninja's work finally pushed these legendary men off the scene.

When the Tokugawa clan took control of Japan in 1603, the country entered a period of relative peace and totalitarian control. The shinobi no mono, as a decisive force on the battlefield, was no longer needed, and so their use shifted more into the sphere of espionage and counter-espionage.

The decline of their popularity hastened the activity of leading ninja in compiling records to preserve their teaching. In 1676 a shinobi named Fujibayashi Yasutake, who came from a samurai family, probably from Iga province, completed work on his masterpiece — a collection of information on shinobi no jutsu that he had gained through personal experience. This collection is today known as the Bansenshukai.

"In principle, the greatest and deepest secret in the shinobi traditions is contained in the chapter 'The Use of Spies' in The Art of War by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu.
If you do not study this text thoroughly in every detail, and think that what is essential for the ninja are the various 'admirable' skills — such as crossing a water moat or a high wall — then you will be entirely off the mark and will, as the saying goes, put the cart before the horse." Fujibayashi Yasutake


GOKAN – THE FIVE SPIES

• Inkō No Kan — Local spies — Their purpose is to gather information and achieve their aims by using the local dialect. This is the same as the Japanese skill called dakkō, which literally means "copying from the mouth" and is a method of espionage, deception, or information-gathering through a good knowledge of the local dialect.
• Nairyō No Kan — Internal spies — Their aim is to lure a member of the enemy's retinue, or someone close to the enemy, and use him for one's own ends. A good internal spy will carry out his tasks thoroughly and precisely. But beware: the enemy may use this technique on you, winning over one of your men as his ally. Only rarely does one succeed in planting such a spy in the enemy's ranks; to do so means you must prepare them years in advance and with the utmost care, directing and controlling them before they are truly needed.
• Hantoku No Kan — Converted spies — Here it is a matter of captured enemy spies and their use for our own ends. Through them you can obtain exceptionally excellent information. In Japan this is called kaerinin or sorinin. You can use enemy shinobi agents by feeding them false information, which allows you to manipulate your enemy's plans to your advantage. It is precisely these converted spies whom, according to Sun Tzu, you should reward most liberally.
• Shichō No Kan — Doomed, or expendable, spies. They are those to whom we deliberately pass false information so that they carry it to the enemy. When the enemy uncovers the deception, these spies usually perish — sacrificed for the sake of the ruse.
• Tensei No Kan — Surviving spies are those trained in sabotage and reconnaissance carried out by infiltrating enemy lines and positions. This is the archetypal shinobi no mono from our modern perspective.

What follows from this short treatise for today's ninjutsu enthusiasts?

• [1] Ninjutsu is not a physical martial art — meaning a standalone fighting style — and it contains no instructions on how to fight man to man. It is rather a supplementary education of the samurai, encompassing specific tactical and strategic principles of obtaining and using information to defeat the enemy.
• [2] The practical combat disciplines practised by the samurai, and thus by the ninja, were kenjutsu (swordsmanship), iaijutsu (the art of the quick draw), yarijutsu (the art of spear fighting), kyūjutsu (archery), yabusame (mounted archery), shurikenjutsu (the throwing of short straight blades), taihojutsu (arresting and binding), bajutsu (horsemanship) and many others.
• [3] The shinobi soldiers formed no special social class of medieval Japan. A ninja could be anyone, at any social level.
• [4] The designations jonin (upper ninja), chunin (middle ninja) and genin (lower ninja) likewise do not refer to social status, as is often wrongly interpreted, but to the range of knowledge, experience and skill.
• [5] Ninja, or properly shinobi, is a term reserved for medieval Japan and the Japanese. It follows that no one today can become a ninja. Everyone, however, may study the period documents and in their free time revive the traditions of these soldiers, as various groups of historical fencing, period crafts and traditional Japanese martial skills do.

To serious students of ninjutsu I recommend studying the following historical documents, which were also the source for this article:

• Yokan Denkai and Yokan Rigen — Study and traditional commentaries on the 13th chapter of The Art of War by Master Sun Tzu,
  by Chikamatsu Shigenori, 1736
• Bansenshukai — "The Sea of Myriad Rivers Merging,"
  by Fujibayashi Yasutake, 1676
• Shōninki — "The True Value of the Ninja,"
  by Natori Sanjurō Masazumi, 1681
• Shinobi Hiden, better known as Ninpiden — "The Hidden Traditions of the Ninja,"
  by Hattori Hanzo and others, 1560

On the sources: The period manuals cited above are available today in the modern English translations of Antony Cummins and Yoshie Minami: Bansenshūkai as The Book of Ninja (2013), Shōninki as True Path of the Ninja (2011), Ninpiden / Shinobi Hiden as The Secret Traditions of the Shinobi (2012); the commentaries of Chikamatsu Shigenori appeared in the Book of Samurai series. Japanese terms and names are given in the standard (Hepburn) romanization.

History: al-Masʿūdī on the Slavs

The Ṣaqāliba [1] are descended from Mādhāy, son of Japheth, son of Noah [2]; all these peoples trace their descent and reckon their lineage back to him — or so, at least, most of those who have studied the question hold. The Ṣaqāliba — the Slavs — dwell in the north, from where they first spread westward.

They are divided into several distinct nations, who war among themselves and who have kings. Some are Christians of the Jacobite rite [3]; others are heathen, having no scripture and knowing nothing of divine law [4].

Among these various nations that make up this heathen stock, there is one that from ancient times has held sovereign power. Their king is called Mājik [5], and they themselves are known as the Walītābā [6]. In former times all the Slavs acknowledged the supremacy of these, for from among them was chosen the chief ruler, and all the other chieftains counted themselves his servants [7].

Among the other Slavic nations the order is roughly as follows. The nation of the Istrāna [8], whose king in our own day is called Basqlābij [9]; then the nation of the Dūlāba [10], whose king is called Wānjslāf [11]. Others bear the name Namjīn [12], whose king is called Gharānd [13]; among the Slavs these are the bravest and the finest horsemen. Then follow the Manābin [14], whose king bears the name Ratīmīr [15]; then the Sarbīn [16], a Slavic nation greatly feared, for reasons that would take too long to explain and whose deeds would require detailed description — these hold to no particular religion. Then follows the nation called Murāwa [17], and another known as the Kharwātīn [18], and another called the Sāsīn [19], another the Khashānīn [20], and the Barānijābīn [21]. The names of some of their kings that we have given are in fact dynastic titles and not personal names.

The Sarbīn — the Serbs we have mentioned — have the custom of burning themselves alive when their king or chieftain dies; in the fire they also sacrifice their horses. This nation has customs resembling those of the Indians. Earlier in this work, in describing the Caucasus and the Khazars, we noted that in the land of the Khazars there dwells, besides the Khazars themselves, a population of Slavs and Rus, who likewise offer themselves up in the fire. These Slavs and the peoples akin to them spread rather toward the east than toward the west.

The foremost king of the Slavs is al-Dīr [22], whose dominion embraces great cities, much cultivated land, many troops and countless armies. Muslim merchants journey to his capital with all manner of goods.

On the borders of this king of the Slavs comes the king al-Afrāgh [23], who possesses a gold mine, cities, broad and well-tilled fields, a numerous army and a large population. He is, however, at war with the Byzantines, the Franks, the Bazkard [24] and other surrounding nations. The strife among them is unceasing. The neighbour of this king is the king of the Huns. This nation is the fairest, the most numerous and the most warlike of all.

The Slavs consist of many different nations and are widely scattered across the world, but this work is not the place for their fuller description and classification. I began with the king whose sovereignty was acknowledged by all the other rulers from the earliest times — that is, Mājik, king of the Veleti, who are the original, pure-blooded Slavs, the most respected, and pre-eminent over all the other branches of this race. Later, the discord that settled among these nations destroyed their original order, and the various families formed separate groups, each choosing its own king, as we have said. To set down all these events would take very long, the more so as I have already described them, in structured and great detail, in my earlier works, the Historical Chronicle and the Intermediate History.


Notes:

• [1] The Slavs. In the author's usage "Slav" denotes the primary stock or race; the particular peoples — Veleti, Serbs, Germans, Saxons, Rus, Vandals, Obodrites and the like — were all reckoned Slavs. [in the source: Ṣaqāliba]
• [2] A line traced from the Flood described in Genesis, chapters 6–9. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Japheth had seven sons, one of whom was named Madai (in the source Mādhāy), from whom, according to Muslim tradition, the race of the Slavs descends.
• [3] The Old Oriental Orthodox Christian church, widespread in India and Syria, which traces its origin to St Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, who went to preach from Palestine to India.
• [4] This does not mean they had no spiritual knowledge. To a Muslim, a "heathen" or unbeliever is anyone who does not follow the teaching of Abraham.
• [5] [in the source: Mājik] A word left untranslated by the translators; the author reads it as "magus" — a mage, i.e. a sorcerer or prophet.
• [6] [in the source: Walītābā] The author identifies these, most likely, as the Veleti (also Liutici), a tribe of the Baltic Slavs.
• [7] To be understood as subordinates, not as slaves or servants.
• [8] [in the source: Istrāna] A word left unexplained by the translators; the author suggests they may be the present-day inhabitants of Istria (i.e. the Slovenes), or, in the 10th century, perhaps the Stodorani (also Hevelli).
• [9] [in the source: Basqlābij] Perhaps "Václavič," likely a family name; the author proposes possibly a brother of Václav, i.e. Boleslav I "the Cruel."
• [10] [in the source: Dūlāba] The tribe of the Dulebes.
• [11] [in the source: Wānjslāf] The author proposes Václav (Wenceslaus) I.
• [12] [in the source: Namjīn] The author proposes the Germans.
• [13] [in the source: Gharānd] The author proposes Gero "the Great" I.
• [14] [in the source: Manābin] A people left unidentified by the translators; the author suggests, most likely, the population of Lower Pannonia.
• [15] [in the source: Ratīmīr] The author proposes Ratimir, "the Slavic duke on the Drava."
• [16] [in the source: Sarbīn] The author proposes the Serbs.
• [17] [in the source: Murāwa] The author proposes the Moravians.
• [18] [in the source: Kharwātīn] The author proposes the Croats.
• [19] [in the source: Sāsīn] The author proposes the Saxons.
• [20] [in the source: Khashānīn] The author proposes, most likely, the Kashubians.
• [21] [in the source: Barānijābīn] The translator speculates about "some" Serbian tribe; the author offers, as a further conjecture, a tribe that might have given its name, for example, to the Baranavichy plain in Belarus, including the town of Baranavichy.
• [22] [in the source: Aldayr] A king unknown to historians. The author proposes that at that time one of the most powerful rulers of the Rus of the Rurikid dynasty reigned — the so-called Oleg the Prophet — whose realm was also called Garðaríki, "the kingdom of towns." (Other scholars rather connect the name al-Dīr with Dir.)
• [23] [in the source: al-Afragh] The author proposes, through the reading al-a(f)-Pra(g)-ha, the king "of Prague," i.e. Václav (Wenceslaus) I.
• [24] [in the source: Bazkard] Probably the Bāshghird — i.e. the European Huns, dwelling in the territory between Byzantium (south), the Franks (west), the Pechenegs (east) and the Slavs (north).

About the author of the original work:

Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Masʿūdī [896 – 956] was an Arab historian and geographer, also called the Arab Herodotus, who was born in Baghdad. After ceaseless travels he settled at last in Egypt, around the year 941, where he wrote the first draft of his universal history, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar ("The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems").

On the sources: The text comes from al-Masʿūdī's Murūj al-dhahab ("The Meadows of Gold"). The standard critical edition and translation is Barbier de Meynard & Pavet de Courteille, Les Prairies d'or (Paris, 1861–1877); the Slavic passage is treated within the corpus of Arabic sources for Slavic history (cf. T. Lewicki, Źródła arabskie do dziejów Słowiańszczyzny). Names in square brackets give the scholarly transliteration; the identifications are the author's proposed readings, and the body follows the international (DIN 31635 / IJMES) convention.

History: Ibn Khurradādhbih on the Radhanites and the Rūs

The routes of the Jewish merchants whom we call al-Rādhāniyya run from west to east and from east to west, by both land and sea. Their routes link the western Mediterranean with India and China. From the western Mediterranean they export Slavic eunuchs [1]; Romance, Frankish and Lombard slaves [2]; young Romance and Andalusian girls and boys; brocade; beaver pelts, marten and other furs; and aromatics such as storax [3] and medicinal substances such as mastic [4]. From the sea-bed near the land of the Franks comes also a substance called busadh, commonly known as coral. They trade in swords as well. From the Far East they import musk, aloes-wood, camphor, cinnamon and other eastern goods. These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Frankish [5], Andalusian [6] and Slavic [7].

The routes of the Rus merchants, whom we call al-Rūs and who are of the race of the Slavs [8], lead from the farthest reaches of the land of the Slavs to the eastern Mediterranean, where they sell the pelts of beaver and black fox, and swords as well. The Byzantine ruler levies a tithe — a tax of one-tenth — upon their goods. They return by sea by way of Samkarsh [9], the Jewish town, and from there make their way onward into Slavic territory.

They travel also by another route, sailing down the river Tanais [10], the river of the Slavs, passing the town of Khamlīj [11], the capital of the Khazars, where the ruler levies a tithe upon them. From there they descend to the Caspian Sea, making for a place known to them. This sea is five hundred farsakhs [12] in length. Sometimes they carry their goods on the backs of camels from the town of Jurjān [13] to Baghdad, where Slavic-speaking eunuchs serve as their interpreters. They pass themselves off as Christians, and like them pay the jizya — a head-tax [14].


Notes:

• [1] Castrated "guardians of the bedchamber," employed in the Arab world to guard women or an entire harem, but also serving as courtiers, singers, religious specialists, soldiers, and even royal guards.
• [2] The Lombards: a West Germanic people originally from the lower Elbe, who in the 6th century CE conquered northern Italy and founded their kingdom there.
• [3] Also styrax, a tree resin used to treat various ailments, but above all as incense in Greek Orthodox worship.
• [4] Also mastix, a gum resin from a shrub, used medicinally and, for example, as a natural chewing gum to cleanse the mouth and teeth.
• [5] Note: not the modern French language, but rather some form of the Old Germanic speech used by the merchants of the Frankish Empire.
• [6] Note: not modern Spanish, but some form of the Old Romance speech used by merchants in the southern part of the Frankish Empire, in Andalusia and the northern Mediterranean.
• [7] Note: not any modern national language, but an early (Old) Slavic form of speech used by merchants in the Slavic and Rus lands.
• [8] Ṣaqāliba — the Slavs. In the medieval Arabic sources "Slav" denotes the broad ethnic stock; the individual peoples (Veleti, Serbs, Croats, Rus and others) were all reckoned among them.
• [9] [in the source: Samkarsh] Phanagoria of the Byzantine chronicles, i.e. the present-day Russian town of Taman, on the eastern shore of the Kerch Strait.
• [10] The present-day river Don. The Don, however, flows not into the Caspian but into the Black Sea; so either the author was mistaken and meant the Volga, or he omitted the portage from the Don to the Volga.
• [11] [in the source: Khamlīj] A trading quarter in the capital of the Khazar Empire, the city of Itil, which — together with the empire itself — was destroyed around 969 by the Rus ruler Sviatoslav I Igorevich.
• [12] [in the source: farsakh] Also parasang, an ancient Persian measure of distance.
• [13] [in the source: Jurjān] The present-day town of Gorgan, about 30 km from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea.
• [14] [in the source: jizya] The annual head-tax on the non-Muslim population, the so-called dhimmī; it was a payment for their legal protection in a Muslim land under Muslim law, guaranteeing the protection of their customs and rights, with certain restrictions.

About the author of the original work:

Abū'l-Qāsim ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Khurradādhbih [c. 820 – 912] served for many years as director of the barīd, the Abbasid postal and intelligence service. A friend of the caliph al-Muʿtamid, who reigned from 870 to 892, he wrote works on music theory, literature and geography. His Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik ("The Book of Routes and Kingdoms") is among the earliest surviving works of descriptive geography in Arabic. Later Arab geographers expanded and improved upon it with observations from their own travels; from quotations in those later authors we know that what survives is only an abridged version of his great work.

On the sources: The passage is taken from Ibn Khurradādhbih's Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik ("The Book of Routes and Kingdoms"). The standard critical edition and French translation is M. J. de Goeje, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum VI (Leiden, 1889). Names in square brackets give the scholarly transliteration; the body of the article follows the international (DIN 31635 / IJMES) convention.

History: al-Marwazī on the Rūs

The Rūs live on an island. The island extends three days' journey in every direction. It is covered with groves and forests and surrounded by a lake. They are many, and they look to the sword as their livelihood and their calling. When one of them dies and leaves behind sons and daughters, all his property passes to the daughters, while the sons receive only a sword, with the words: "Your father won his wealth by the sword — imitate him in this and follow him." Such was their upbringing, until the time they adopted Christianity in the year 300 [1].

When they adopted Christianity, the faith blunted their swords; the door of their livelihood was closed to them, they returned to hardship and poverty, and their means grew scarce. So they resolved to become Muslims, that raiding and holy war — jihād — might be lawful to them, and that they might return to some of their former ways. They therefore sent envoys to the ruler of Khwārazm [2] — four kinsmen of their independent king, whom they called Vladimir, just as the Turks call theirs khāqān and the Bulghārs theirs yiltawār [3]. The envoys reached Khwārazm with their message. The Khwārazm-Shāh [4] was pleased at their wish to become Muslims and sent them one who would instruct them in the religious laws of Islam. And so they were converted.

They are strong and mighty men who travel on foot into distant lands for their expeditions. They likewise sail in ships upon the Khazar Sea [5], seizing vessels and plundering cargo. They sail also to Constantinople [6] across the Pontic Sea [7], despite the chains across the strait. Once, sailing the Khazar Sea, they made themselves for a time masters of the city of Bardhaʿa [8]. Their bravery and courage are so well known that each one of them is worth several men of any other nation. Were they to have horses and become riders, they would be a great scourge upon mankind. [9]


Notes:

• [1] The year 300 of the Islamic calendar, i.e. roughly 913 CE. This early date is today read as reflecting an earlier wave of Christianization among the Rūs, rather than the baptism of the Rus under Prince Vladimir I in 988.
• [2] The kingdom of Khwārazm (Chorasmia) lay south of the Aral Sea, on the lower course of the Amu Darya (the Greek Oxus), between present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
• [3] The author presents the name Vladimir not as a personal name but as a title — a designation of the ruler of the Rūs, "the one who rules." Modern scholars read this as al-Marwazī having mistaken for a title the personal name of the famous Prince Vladimir I.
• [4] The ruler, or sovereign, of Khwārazm.
• [5] The present-day Caspian Sea.
• [6] Tsargrad, present-day Istanbul.
• [7] The present-day Black Sea.
• [8] [in the source: Bardhaʿa] The present-day town of Barda in Azerbaijan, on the Terter (Tartar) river.
• [9] The Rus did use cavalry, but not on their naval expeditions.

About the author of the original text:

Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir al-Marwazī, or simply al-Marwazī, was a physician and the author of an encyclopaedia, Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān ("The Natures of Animals"), from which the anthropological passage on the Rūs above is drawn. He came from the city of Marw (also known as Alexandria Margiana), in the realm of Khurāsān in Persia, in the territory of present-day Turkmenistan. He served the Seljuk sultan Malik-Shāh, who reigned from 1072 to 1092 CE, and his successors, until his own death around 1130.

On the sources: The passage is taken from al-Marwazī's encyclopaedia Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān ("The Natures of Animals"), from its section on China, the Turks and India. The standard edition and English translation is V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zamān Ṭāhir Marvazī on China, the Turks and India (Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1942). Names in square brackets, "[in the source: …]", give the scholarly transliteration; the body of the article follows the international (DIN 31635 / IJMES) convention.